La Esperanza: This village is where we had our homestays for most of the trip. It is located high up in the mountains in the department of Intibuca, and is one of the coldest cities of Honduras

Los Hoyos: On the plateau overlooking the valley of Azacualpa, there is an area where series of almost perfect cylindrical holes can be found on the ground. These holes have generated a series of theories, some of which are ridiculously extravangant. The most popular explanation seems to be in pre-Columbian obsidian mines, a theory which is supported by the abundance of obsidian in the area. Another theory points towards trenches used for protection during war times. Whatever the origin of said holes, they are unique formations that have not yet been properly studied.

The walk from La Esperanza to Los Hoyos takes approximately two hours and a half up the mountain. Seen in this satellite image is the roof of the Los Olivos Public School, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The holes are found a few hundred meters north of the school in a patch of cloud forest.

El Lago de Chiligatoro: Our mission in Honduras consited of a building project for a poor local family. The father had apparently fallen in the Chiligatoro lake while intoxicated, drowning and leaving behind two very young sons with their mother and sisters. The tragedy, however sombre, did nothing to erase the beauty of the lake we passed afore every morning when we went to work. The mornings were very dry and cold, but the chilling winds soon turned into unbearable heat when the sun rose.

The new house we built:

The bus stop in Siguatepeque: The road between Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula forked west here in Siguatepeque, where merchants would harass the voyagers onboard while the bus made a brief halt. The transit system stopped right next to what I believe was a Texaco. The satellite images do nothing to show the incredible amount of mud one had to skip through to get to the other side of the road.

El lago de Yahoa: If someone finds a pair of black Diesel leather shoes around the east of Yahoa lake, they are probably mine. We walked up halfway to La Guama, where we managed to catch a bus to Peña Blanca, northwest of the lake. We stayed in a private hotel near D&D Brewery, just north of El Mochito.

Copan Ruinas & En La Manzana Verde:

The San Pedro Sula bus station:

The bridge in El Progreso:

The deteriorating warf in La Ceiba:

Hotel California, La Ceiba:

The two ferries leaving from La Ceiba:

Paradise Divers, Utila, Honduras:

Pumpkin Hill, Utila, Honduras:

Halfway through the show, they distributed small packets of information to sponsor children in great need for 35$/month, and that’s really just wonderful!

I’m wondering two things though… How much of that money gets tunneled directly to the child? Also, How many children (and for how long) could Moncton Wesleyan have sponsored with 50K$ instead of building a giant Christmas Tree with fancy lighting?

I havent been to a church for a while… and it’s really impressive to see such a cohesive community work together to produce something like this. But in the end, for the children in need of sponsorship… all that effort, all that money and all of those donations, all that (volunteer) work, it’s all gone to waste.

Or most of it.

Compassion Canada looks like a solid Christian organization. I’m hesitant of giving them my money, but for other people who might be interested, their website is quite sympathetic. www.compassion.ca

If you’ve never heard about the Moncton Wesleyan Church, or if you want more information about The Living Christmas Tree, visit their website at www.monctonwesleyan.com.

Satellite imagery software has traditionally been focused on mapping high population density zones over small cities and rural areas. Most imagery available before now was also focused on US territory. Seeing as I live in a small Canadian city, I was very pleased at seeing that I could now take advantage of the image resolution necessary to peek at windows (of corporate buildings such as that of l’Assomption Vie, of course…).

Bird's eye view in Bing showing downtown Moncton at maximum zoom

Google Maps showing maximum zoom of downtown Moncton

Don’t take my word for it, but I encourage you to try out this nifty tool Microsoft has put at your disposition. Who knows, maybe it will be just as good an improvement over Google Maps in your area as it was in mine! Although my fair skepticism at Bing Maps has all but disappeared, I will be the first one to stand by Google’s search engine as Bing (search) attempts to compete.

As Fred had stressed us to get up early in the morning so we would have the evening to party in town, we were quite surprised to see that no-one was planning anything for the night. We sort of happened to slowly figure that one out after realising that everyone was staring at the candle, watching junebugs die in it’s flames for a few hours or so. We really had a great night alone at the hotel, it’s a good thing we had gotten up early in the morning.

The Jungle River Lodge Hotel offered a really nice white water rafting package for a small price, and so the next morning, exhausted as we were from our previous night, we went up the river with our rafts and instructors to get ready. To get to the top of the current, we had to cross the rapids on foot, climb on boulders of great heights and dive from ten-meter-high cliffs (the scared off girls had the option to jump off a lower ledge). It was really great fun.

At the lodge itself, we had a very scenic view of the steep surrounding mountains, and had at our availability the river to swim and dive into from a tall rock. The lodge was very nice, and its employees were dressed in the fashion of Tarzan and Jane, including the massive hairlocks. They had good music playing all night long, and it seemed like too short a time had passed before we went off in the shuttle back to La Ceiba.

When we got to La Ceiba, we met a new friend from Mexico who helped us get around to the Hotel California (that proved to be much of a challenge, since there was no sign at the entrance, and no one seemed to have really heard of it before). The streets of La Ceiba were filled with half a million people from all around the world, there were cultural displays present in the streets, peddlers were selling their wares at fair prices all over the place and some really popular latino bands were playing at every intersection from the main street.

We soon found out why we had not seen any pretty girls during our stay in Honduras: we had not gone to La Ceiba yet, and there seemed to be most of them. I sipped at the most expensive Scotch Whiskey I could find all night (a meager USD $30 for twelve year old stuff) and we really had a good time.

For a fair amount of time there was to be found in the streets of La Ceiba parade floats of dancing women sponsored by large corporations and important investors. People living in higher appartments were throwing out bead necklaces from their balconies to a craving crowd. Occasionally a man would throw out a few Lempiras out of the window, and people would be driven mad for it.

The general sense of excitement and ecstasy was perpetuated throughout the night into to small hours of the next morning. At that time, all my friends happened to be either sick or really tired, and I wondered in the streets of this unknown city in search of a nice club to pass some time. I eventually found a very nice place called Le Pacha, which was a two-storey discoteca built under a sort of tent roof, with a decorative indoor pool. The cover fees were set to LPS. 200, which is quite high in Honduras. The drinks were cheap, and there I danced (or tried to) with new friends until 5:30AM. I basically got no sleep at all, but I had the greatest night in a long time.

We have had serious problems with the water from our first day in La Esperanza, and not being able to wash properly was a major hindrance to our comfort here. Along with the project coordinator, GVN has arranged for us to change households to one with running water, provided the city tanks are operational.

As we arrived to our household after getting back from Los Hoyos, we got a call from someone at GVN telling us we were to pack up and get ready to move to a different house. We got to our new house and met our new family, younger at heart and more talkative than our former. Most families here seem to comprise from the whole family tree, and sometimes it is hard to see who is who in regards to another.

We soon found out just how much party animals they were when they asked us to invite our friends over for a night of dancing: since they had heard that Dre, Fred, Victoria and I were also going to the carnival at La Ceiba on the weekend, they figured we might need a bit of help mastering the local dancing. And oh, did we… The next night Fred and Victoria came over and we danced on Punta, Merengue and Reggaeton (I guess the local “pop music”) all night. How embarrassing.

It wasn’t long before we noticed that Elvis, the older son of our family, had something going on for Fred, as he kept demonstrating daring dance moves with her. We found that quite amusing.

The next morning, despite the late night, we were to get up very early again to catch the 4:30AM bus, and again, Fred had insisted we go get her and Vicky at their household before attempting the ‘dangerous’ walk through the city. While I was getting ready that morning to go to their place, my friend Dre was being sick again in the washroom. We were already running a few minutes late when I decided we should wait no longer, and so I left him at our house while I went out to fetch the ladies.

Of course, they could do nothing else than complain at my five-minutes-late arrival at their place while I waited for them to finish up whatever they were doing and gather up their stuff. Five minutes had already passed by when I passed through the gates again, ready to go and regroup with Dre at our meeting spot. However, things could not really run so smooth without one thing going awry; too busy complaining, Fred let one of the dogs out in the street, and we had to wait another twenty minutes as she scampered off in the streets like a wild goose running after the dog, trying to herd him back inside the gates. Fair enough, if she had not cried out the whole time how I should have caught the dog in the first place, awakening everyone in their nearby homes.

When the girls were finally on their feet and ready to go, they ran off in the distance at a trot, with me trailing behind them, all the way to our meeting point with Dre. They had to turn back a few times as I cried after them when they took the wrong turn, but generally, the walk over there went well. Thank god we had taken the trouble of meeting at their place so we could protect them from the rabid dogs. We never really figured out what purpose we served as far as protection went: the girls (ahem, Fred) seemed quite content to walk off at a distance to lead the way.

I just had to write about Fred.

Back at the Metropolitan Bus Station, we stopped in the food court to get something to eat. Since our friend Fred had been conditioning us to stop spending money from the start of our trip, it seemed natural for me to open up a peanut butter and jelly jar to make some cheap canadian-style sandwiches. As me and my friend Dre were spreading the peanut butter with our hunting knives in the middle of the bus station, Fred went out and bought a fancy freshly-pressed tropical juice along with an exquisite plate consisting of a variety of meats and vegetables, followed by french fries and rice. She did look pretty full afterwards, but I did not dare comment on her spendings.

It just so happened that we had spent our last few weeks in the countryside, and the feminine sightings we had had in those times had been less than up to par with any respectable canadian standards. As we were innocently enjoying our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I had this vision at twelve o’ clock of our first really beautiful, incredibly stunning, amazingly gorgeous, astonishingly shapely and perfectly pretty latina walking by with her mother (we are running out of adverbs and adjectives at this point). In all the surprise she had bestowed upon my eyes, I could not help but point her out very discreetly and very very subtly to my friend Dre. He also seemed to be surprised by her rare aesthetics (for the Hondurian standards we had met). As we were chatting away of nothing and everything, she kept spurring our conversation for a good half hour. We had the pleasure of noticing that she also seemed to be looking our way occasionally and laughing with her mother. We sort of shrugged it of as one of those gringo spotting moments.

When we all got up to leave, under Fred’s urgent war-cry-like signal, the girl we had been talking about got up and walked towards my friend Dre. She had a piece of paper, without doubt written out by a friend of her’s, on which was inscribed in English:

Hello! Can I take a picture os you?

Sure, I mean, why not?

Taken aback by the sudden manifestation of a lady we had only seen up to now in the perifery of our vision, Dre smoothly babbled something that sounded like a reply while she took a picture of him with her phone. I don’t know if I could have pulled the same cool he had at that moment. Since he was not very well versed in Spanish, and she could speak very little English, the conversation was limited to a few sputtered words. Our mamasita further managed to ask for Dre’s email address and took my picture. She was disappointed to learn that my friend Dre had a girlfriend.

We found the encounter quite funny, and afterwards always referred to it as the angel 14 girl (inspired by her email address).

We caught back to a seemingly all-too-unimpressed Fred that pushed us to the ticket booth. The drive back to La Esperanza, as with any event pertaining to La Esperanza, was quite uneventful.

We mostly spent our week working on the house in Chiligatoro. However, one evening of utter boredom, Dre, our volunteering friend Stacey and I decided to go on a adventure. We opened up our Honduras guidebook to a page entitled Los Hoyos. It talked of an untouched and never-much-really-before-studied historical site near La Esperanza. The site apparently consisted of a myriad of deep cylindrical holes (hoyos) in the ground. Fair enough, we went on a two-hour hike up the mountain to Los Hoyos.

One thing I learned from the hike up to the site, pertaining to bodily functions, was that the rate of belching was not only dependant on the ingestion of carbonated beverages (such as Banana Tropical), but also on atmospheric pressure. The hike was very scenic (pictures to come) and exhausting.

On our way back from Los Hoyos we hitchhiked from the back of a truck. Back in town, as we were getting down from the truck, we met with a bunch of schoolgirls in their uniforms. Opening scene of The Giggling Schoolgirls, Episode II.

They asked for our names and made us speak in french. One girl told me I had nice eyes, and the pack went giggling away. We could still hear them crying out in ecstasy in the distance after being seperated for a few minutes. Admittedly, they were probably not the same girls we had encountered in Episode I, but they fit rather well in the same category.

That was the end of that Episode.

We found our hostel very quickly — called En la Manzana Verde (In the Green Apple), it looked like a dirty shithole from the street. We looked back to the other nice hotels nearby in deep regret, and braced ourselves while we walked through the gates in the private garden. There it looked fairly decent, with a nice porch and a very tall mango tree in the center. The hostel really was not that great, but we had running hot water and a kitchen, should we want to cook some food.

There we met some very interesting people from all around the world: there was a girl from Switzerland that had very droopy eyes and a nice mellow accent, a guy with short blonde hair from the UK, another from Holland, a blonde girl from Australia that happened to be a scuba diver, and a couple from Canada who were teaching English in Tegucigalpa, the capital. The latter two stayed longer with us, and we later learned that the man was going to Harvard in political science and that his lady was going to Browne University in drama.

The village of Copán is built near the mayan ruins, and fancies well-cobbled streets and lots of tourist shops. Most of the city is distributed around (and down from) the city square, which features some plant gardens and a fountain. The shops mostly sold the same things — hand-made Hondurian and Cuban cigars, stone sculptures and mayan artifacts, cheap wooden jewelry and local coffee. Some of the fancier shops had more expensive kitchen wares and jewelry made of gold and silver. Gemstones such as jade are quite popular there, as the Mayan used to control most of the jade traffic in Central America.

We had a few plans for our stay at Copán, the first of which consisted of a hike through the mountains up to a good spot where we could see the city. At dawn, we went in search of sunset. The view was beautiful, and as with the rest, I will put up pictures when I get back home, or as soon as I get a chance.

The highlight of our trip to Copán was the visit of the ruins. It took us a few minutes to walk down to them. There we purchased our tickets and a tour guide. I have honestly no idea how to sum up whatever the guide told us about the ruins. They were great, arranged in big pyramids around a large flat field, and perfectly straight. This is really where pictures are worth a thousand words. At the entrance to the ruins we have seen and taken photographs of the Macaw bird, the national bird of Honduras.

The next day, we drove up to some hot spings fourty-five minutes from the village. The drive there had the most splendid view of the Honduran scenery we have seen yet. Unfortunately, none of us had our cameras with us at that time. The hot springs are a natural source of hot water arranged for tourists in a fashion as to provide hot baths (up to 50 odd degrees Celsius), ‘steam baths’ and a natural sauna. It really was an incredible experience, and we all enjoyed it very much. The view and overall feeling of relaxation was epic.

Back in Copán, we met a friendly fellow who just happened to be a drug dealer. No mom, we did not buy.

After much perusing of the city shops, we found one really worth it’s weight in gold — litterally. La Casa del Jade, hidden away from the town square, contains some of the most valuable jewelry of Honduras. Since the area is reknown for its jade trade, and since it is, after all, called the house of jade, it featured many pieces of jade. It also had very high quality pearls, opals, turquoise, gold and silver.

At that store we met with a really cool woman (who was trying to sell us her stock). After a while, we started speaking in Spanish and had quite a lenghty conversation. We have learned that she puts sugar in her milk and that there are about ten ways to say “filthy spying wrench” in Spanish. We talked with her until the store was about to close, at which time my friend Dre, not very experienced in Spanish, wanting to say “You go home, your shift is done for tonight”, said “Vamos a ti casa anoche” (We’re going at your place for the night). Yes, very well done indeed, Dre.

Two times there we ate at a fancy restaurant. Wanting to save money, the first time I opted for just a salad and a Sprite. The salad contained two slices of tomato, two slices of cucumber, two slices of radish and one piece of avocado, with no actual salad. It cost me around 95% of a full meal. Thinking I was just very unlucky, the next day I ordered only drinks. I bought two shots of Black Sambuka (two for the price of one), which ended up costing me LPS. 110. With just LPS. 10 more, I could have had a full meal. I think I gave up on fancy food after that. On the upside, the waitress was fantastic and very charismatic.

My first sight of San Pedro Sula, reknown as the industrial capital of Honduras, was its famous and new Metropolitan Bus Station. We got out of the bus and into this massive building to find ourselves in awe of its size. It reminded us more of an airport station than a bus station, not only for it’s size (a number of times larger than Moncton’s airport), but also for the excessive availability of chain stores and a food court.

Our friend Fred then frantically proceeded into rushing us to the other side of the station, where we boarded our next bus thirty minutes early. The drive to Copán city was quite scenic and enjoyable.

We found ourselves going through eight roadblocks along the way. At one of them, the bus was stopped and parked on the side of the road for a few minutes. After a little while, we saw some very heavily armed policemen mounting it and searching it’s passengers (presumably for cocaine). All my friends handed over their passports to the policemen, who looked at them for a long time blankly before handing them back over to each of us. As I was not carrying my real passport with me at the time, I handed over a color photocopy to the policeman, who seemed baffled by the piece of paper. He asked for my real passport, which I could obviously not provide. I had to do the next most obvious thing and hand him out my canadian driver’s license. He accepted that and moved on to the last one on the bus, our friend Fred. She had no idea she was soon to be arrested for terrorism. Neither of us did.

As she had not seen wise to bring her real passport with her, she produced a color photocopy just like mine. The same police officer, with a hand resting on his AK-47, seemed just as baffled by Fred’s paper as he was by mine. Maybe it was a black and white copy? Seeing as Fred had not thought it wise to bring other proof of canadian citizenship or identity, the police officer was insisting that she could not hand over a photocopy as an official document. He called over another man, with his finger resting on the trigger of an equally impressive firearm (I presume they weren’t fucking around). The pair was trying to communicate with Fred verbally (at least for now), but since she had not thought it wise to learn Spanish, they were quickly becoming aggravated by the minute. I thought the scene was rather funny.

The two men then called up their superintendant for help. He came up into the bus and down the cramped alley towards us. They were all speaking very fast, and I guess the jist of it all was that Fred should not travel without her passport, if she really had one. I thought the whole scene was even funnier than before, but at this stage I could not help but giving Fred a hand (only figuratively, as I could not reach her between all the firearms). I calmly explained the leading officer that we were all volunteers working in La Esperanza to build homes for a family in great need. We were a group from Canada visiting the Copán ruins over the weekend. He grudgingly handed over Fred’s copy back after warning us on the importance of possessing a real passport with us at all times while traveling in Honduras.

Minutes later, as I took a peek at the nearby seat, I could still see Fred shaking and furiously writing a diary entry. Good thing she was there to lead us to safety once more.

Admittedly, I can’t always be so smooth. Five minutes from Copán city we passed by the ruins and the bus driver indicated it was our stop. I made my way to the front of the bus and got off to wait for my friends. After a few seconds, I was getting a bit anxious, as I thought they might have missed the bus driver’s directions. When the bus started moving along, I totally freaked out and ran behind it, catching up with it and walking back down the alley to my seat in silence and embarrassment. (Someone could have said something, perhaps?)

One notable event of those four days was the discovery, at the Mercadito Melissa, of a two-for-one deal on galletas de Oreo, as they say over here (They don’t seem to know what an Oreo cookie is). Unfortunately, when I brought my four packs of 48 cookies for LPS. 90 at the counter, I found out the offer was only valid for the paquetes amarillos — the chocolate ones I am allergic to. On the spot, I was quite irritated, so I declared I would write about it in a blog post. Well done.

Later on that week, as we were taking a walk around the city, we had our first encounter with the Giggling Schoolgirls. We wanted to check out a small clothes shop at the other end of the city, and as we entered it we saw a pack of them at the snearby school’s gates, pointing at us and crying out to us. There was nothing of notable interest in the store. However, when we came out twenty minutes later, we found the same girls still there waiting for us to come out. They were now clearly crying out for my friend Dre “La camisa azul, camisa azuuuuuuuuuuul!” (Blue shirt, blue shiiiiiiiiiiirt!). He was obviously enjoying it, for he started waving and laughing at them as he blew a kiss at a distance. By that time they were all chanting in english “I looove youuuuuu!”. I thought that may have been the highlight of our week. End of The Giggling Schoolgirls, Episode I.

Our short stay at La Esperanza was nearing to an end that week, and we decided thursday night that we were too lazy to pack up our stuff for the next morning — we were to wake up at 2:30 AM the next day, throw some stuff in our bags, and leave for Copán city.

We woke up the next morning at 3:00 AM, threw some stuff haphazardly in our bags, and left for Copán city. The moment we got out of the house (after savouring our Corn Flakes sin leche), we realized the walk to the bus station might just not be as much of a breeze as it had been in the past. We could see nothing of the street under our feet: they were a mass of black darkness marked by the faint moonlight on the walls of the surrounding houses. It would have made for a pleasing stroll if not for the presence of rabid starving dogs in the middle of the street. Usually, they are quite calm and restful during the day, but a certain quality of the night seems to bring them to life at dusk. We walked the streets with our knives out and ready (Dre was equipped with his steeltoes) to the house where our other two friends were staying.

Once again, we had to wait after them for a while, as they were not yet ready.

We made our way to the bus station a few minutes early, and in doing so encountered the usual drunkards of La Esperanza, some more dogs and very little light. Thank god our friend Fred was there to lead us to safety. /subtle sarcasm